It is impossible to say just how much I welcome this book. For years, decades and even centuries, so-called 'historians' have repeated utter tosh, lies and misrepresentations about Napoleon. In this superb book, Tim Clayton raises the lies set in stone and shines a light on the illiterate lowlife that have carried on their propaganda for so long. The British Establishment in the late C18th and early C19th were determined to cast Napoleon as the devil incarnate. They accused him of being tyrannical, cruel, and evil - the very same things they were so obviously guilty of themselves. Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Liverpool et al were little more than obnoxious gangsters dressed in silk and ermine and they put out a 'hit' on Napoleon to take the attention away from their own awful and nefarious deeds. They even paid for and encouraged assassins to kill the Emperor - and did not give a damn when innocent civilians were blown to pieces as a result. To pretend that Britain was a nation of laws, freedom and liberty during this period is nothing more than a revolting sick joke.
In 2008 I reviewed Ben Weider's book THE WARS AGAINST NAPOLEON. As a consequence he got in touch with me and invited me to join his International Napoleonic Society. I wrote some twenty articles for the INS and they formed the basis for my own book THE REAL NAPOLEON - THE UNTOLD STORY. Ben was no fan of Pitt or Napoleon's other detractors. It is a shame that he did not live long enough to read Tim Clayton's book.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. As the blurb states:
'Between two attempts in 1800 and 1804 to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte, the British government launched a campaign of black propaganda of unprecedented scope and intensity to persuade George III's reluctant subjects to fight the Napoleonic War, a war to the death against one man: the Corsican usurper and tyrant.
THIS DARK BUSINESS tells the story of the British government's determination to destroy Napoleon Bonaparte by any means possible. We have been taught to think of Napoleon as the aggressor - a man with an unquenchable thirst for war and glory - but what if this story masked the real truth: that the British refusal to make peace either with revolutionary France of with the man who claimed to personify the revolution was the reason this great war continued for more than twenty years? At this pivotal moment when it consolidated its place as number one world power, Britain was uncompromising. To secure the continuing rule of Church and King, the British invented an evil enemy, the perpetrator of any number of dark deeds; and having blackened Napoleon's name, with the help of networks of French royalist spies and hitmen, they also tried to assassinate him.
THIS DARK BUSINESS plunges the reade into the hidden underworld of Georgian politics. Faced with the terrifying prospect of revolution, bribery and coercion are the means to secure compliance in this ruthless world of spies, plots and lies.'
If you want the REAL history of this period - read this book.
I also recommend Tim Clayton's book WATERLOO which I have reviewed earlier on these pages. It is the very best book to be had on that subject.
C. John Tarttelin B.Ed., M.A. (History)
A Souladream Production
(2018)
